Offloading is the new merger for today's electronic manufacturers and it is TSMC that is reaping the benefit. They already handle AMD's 40nm process chips, at least until Global Foundries finds its stride, as well as working with Intel on developing a 'System on a Chip', which will be a smaller, less power hungry Atom. Now it is Fujitsu's turn, as they are passing at least some, but quite possibly all, of their chip manufacturing to TSMC. As well They are selling off their HDD business to Toshiba, a merger mimicking
IBM's glomming onto Hitachi.

As it stands right now, the Windows 7 RC1 will be active into 2010 making it a viable OS for the next year. Right now you need to be a TechNet or MSDN subscriber, but that will change on the 5th of May when it becomes available to everyone. That Release Candidate will likely be one of the more expensive flavours of Windows 7, not some emasculated Home-lite version, which may have you hooked on the equivalent of Ultimate Edition for when you do have to purchase it in June of 2010. You can

Just because you stood in line for a week for the release of Wrath of the Lich King, and gathered a lot of stares and comments about how waiting that long was completely unnecessary; someone with a WoW moded case, mouse and mousepad set is going to beat you when it comes to fanaticism. Take heart from SteelSeries, for they will provide a factory made version so that you don't need to mod one all by yourself. The SteelSeries WOW Mouse and Mat set will put you over the top of the rest if the fans at LAN parties, so

HEXUS has some information to share about a WW2 shoot 'em up with a bit of a twist. Instead of being a solo member of one of the large armies involved in the conflict, you work in occupied France with members of the French Resistance and Allied forces to sabotage the Nazis who occupy France. It sounds like a mix of stealth and action, along with big explosions and vehicles to hijack for added mayhem. Check the preview for some game information, but not the release date, which has yet to be annou

The Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship really hit it's stride in 2009, with a lot more press coverage at wider number of sites compared to previous years, including PC Perspective. Our own Steve Grever headed to LA with camera in hand to capture stills and videos of the best overclockers strutting their stuff. LN tended to be the cooler of choice, but there were a wide variety of rigging, extra fans and insulation, including one competitor who went with full mineral oil submersion. Check out the

If you have an iPhone that hasn't been sprung from jail, you have an AT&T contract as they have the exclusive rights to provide service. It looks like they are going to have to share the bed with a new party, Verizon. A rumoured smaller iPhone could possibly have Verizon as a service provider. There is also a rumoured Kindle-like device that Apple might have in development which will be smaller overall, but with a larger touch screen. Ars

If you ever wished for a boot to the head when you are gaming, you have to spend the $40 it will cost to pick up the Audio2 FX2 Force Feedback Gaming Headset. It uses old style dual RCA jacks as opposed to a USB connection, as well as batteries and a USB port to provide power. OCMODSHOP was impressed with the sound quality, both playback and recording, and they did get a kick out of the force feedback.&nbs

Handmade cabling or factory made? It is a question that can bring up technical terms that sound more at home on the Enterprise than they do in a server room, such as standing harmonic waves, and the loudest proponents of factory cabling are likely to have cut their teeth on coaxial thicknet ethernet cables. Slashdot is having it out here; the EEs and cabling guys are not getting along too well which makes for a more lively conversation. Jump in if you have an opinion, otherwise keep cutting

Be afraid, be very afraid. Where once you were safe listening to our podcasts in audio forum only, our websites mad mastermind has decided to get together with TWiT.TV to provide a video accompaniment to the 'cast. This also means the podcast is now recorded live, which can always add depth to performance. You will need to wait until next Wednesday to see Josh, Al, Ryan and the wonderful Colleen, and even longer to see myself, but until the

HEXUS has pegged the MSRP for the upcoming OCZ Z-Drive, that array of SSDs in a PCI-E 4x slot. The 250GB version will be 950BP, say $1400USD, for ony $2150 you can double that storage, but of you want the big 1TbB model, you'd better have over $3300 kicking around. To full enjoy the extra bandwidth, you should also pick up a regular SSD for your OS drive. Not only will that help the transfer rates on your swap file and OS, there are not too many motherboards out there with a boot from PCI-E option.

AMD has announced their Q1 2009 results, and it was not nearly as bad as what the street was expecting. Analysts expected revenues around $977.8 million, but actual revenues came out at $1.177 billion. AMD still posted a significant loss for the quarter, but this is not a surprise. Losses were pegged at around $416 million. Due to tough economic conditions, and a large volume of inventory that was brought over from the traditionally strong Q4 of last year, AMD took some big hits due to factory under-utilization. AMD has been working hard internally to decrease spe

The Raptor Gaming K1 Keyboard doesn't seem to be for sale at any major online retailers, but it might be worth hunting down if you love keyboards with extras. In this case it is key locks, which can be used to prevent a key, say the Windows key, from being able to be depressed. This is a slightly more elegant solution than forcibly removing it with a screwdriver. It also comes with eight "afterglow" buttons, slightly higher than regular keys and with a glow in the dark top so you can find them if you like gaming in the dark.

Josh has been spending a lot of time thinking about the Core i5 and the choice needed to be made by Intel about Penryn and Nehalem. You can pick up a lot of good info on Nehalem, like how the 16 PCI Express lanes that are integrated into the chip and the proper usage of dual channel memory. The bad news from his prediction is that we won't be seeing these new parts for longer than was originally thought, in part because the Penryn is just too successful. Read on at the top of the page to see the rest of his arguments.

Sure they cost $300 before tax, but if you are looking to be able to completely ignore the world around you as well as listening to your favourite sounds then the Phiaton PS 300 Noise Cancelling headphones are what you need. Sure the economy might be suffering from a horrible disease, it won't matter so much if you can't hear the constant bad news. Head on over to ExtremeTech to see how these headphones became their favourites.